The library was filled with the pallid twilight of a rainy day. Since
early morning the summit of Mount Tom, a dozen miles to the westward,
had been enveloped in ponderous, leaden clouds, and for two hours past
the storm, travelling along the Connecticut Valley, had been deluging
the slopes with autumnal ferocity.
[Illustration]
Through the rain-drenched windows a cold white light entered, flooding
the stack room with its iron tiers of slumbering volumes, and, here
at the barrier-like counter, illumining faintly the rebellious brown
hair of the girl who, with pen in hand, bent over the pile of catalogue
cards. The library was very still, so still that the sibilation of
the moving pen sounded portentously loud. Now and then the rustle of
a turning leaf or the scraping of feet on the floor came from around
the corner of the arched doorway where sat a solitary occupant of the
reading room. Save for these two the library was deserted. The hands
of the clock above the commemorative tablet pointed to a quarter past
twelve and the stack-boy and the assistant librarian had both gone to
their luncheons.
A more prolonged scraping of feet, followed by the sound of a moving
chair, caused the girl at the desk to raise her head and pause at her
work. A little frown of annoyance gathered and then gave place to a
smile of humorous resignation as footfalls sounded on the echoing
silence. From the reading room emerged a tall, thin youth of about
twenty, a youth with a pale, cadaverous face lighted by a pair of
patient, contemplative brown eyes which looked strangely incongruous
and out of place. He carried two books which he laid apologetically on
the counter.
“Excuse me, Miss Hoyt,” he said gently.
“Yes, Mr. Winkley?” she asked, looking up.
“I am very sorry to trouble you, but could you let me have Burton’s
Anatomy of Melancholy?”
“Have――What did you say, please?” she asked startledly.
“Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, please,” he repeated in his patient
voice. She turned hurriedly and disappeared into the stack room. Once
out of sight she leaned against one of the cases and laughed silently
and hysterically.
“Oh,” she thought, “if he doesn’t stop it and go away I shall have
to――to――I shall go crazy!”
Presently, with a final gasp, she brushed the back of her hand across
her eyes and went on down the concrete aisle in search of the volume.
Out at the counter, the youth, left to himself, watched her while she
was in sight and then leaned across to peer at the neatly arranged
cards. She had left her handkerchief beside her work. With a timorous
glance about him, he reached forward, picked it up and with a quick,
vehement movement pressed it to his thin, unsmiling lips. He held it so
a moment, his brown eyes staring widely through the rain-bleared window
as though beholding visions. Then, as her steps came back toward him,
he laid the handkerchief again in its place, straightened himself and
waited.
“Here it is, Mr. Winkley,” she said soberly.
“Thank you. I am sorry to trouble you,” he answered gravely.
“It is only what I am here for,” she answered coldly, taking up her
pen once more. He remained for an instant looking at the bent head.
Then, lifting the Anatomy of Melancholy from the counter, he turned and
walked slowly and quite noiselessly back to his table. But as he went
the ghost of a sigh trembled across the silence.
The girl raised her head with a despairing glance toward the reading
room, jabbed her pen viciously into the ink-stand and went on with
her writing. The clock overhead ticked slowly and softly. The rain
_swished_ past the windows.
But presently a new sound made itself heard. Dim at first, it grew
insistently until the girl heard it and again lifted her head and
listened with a new light in her violet eyes.
_Chug-chug, chug-chug-chug, chug-chug!_
[Illustration]
Automobiles are not common in Ellington, especially after the summer
colony departs, and the approach of this one brought a tinge of color
to the soft cheeks and a flutter to the heart of the librarian. So
often during the past three months she had listened with straining ears
to the panting of an automobile on the road below! Usually the sound
had died away again in the distance, and she had told herself, sighing,
that she was very glad. But to-day the sounds increased every instant.
The _chug-chug_ was slower now and more labored; the car had left the
village road and was climbing the circling gravelled drive to the
library. Every beat brought an answering beat from her heart.
Oh, it was foolish! she told herself angrily. And she didn’t want it
to happen! She hoped it wouldn’t! Resolutely she began her work again,
but the noise of the approaching machine seemed to fill the world
with a tumult of sound. Then, close at hand, the measured _chugs_
suddenly became hurried and incoherent, as though the intruding monster
was violently incensed at being stopped. Then――silence, appalling,
portentous! With white face the girl bent closer to her desk, her
pen tracing quivering figures and letters. The outer door opened and
closed again with a muffled jar. She heard the _swish ... swish_ of
the inner doors as they swung inward and back. Firm footfalls sounded
on the oaken floor. Very different they were from the soft tread of
the library habitué, and there was a determined, resolute character to
them that put the brown-haired librarian in a panic. Oh, how she wished
that she had fled while there had been time! She no longer doubted; the
unexpected, which all along had been the expected, had happened; the
thing which she had feared, and always hoped for, had come to pass. The
steps came nearer, straight from the doorway, scorning the longer and
quieter paths provided by the cocoa-fibre matting. The brown head still
bent over the desk. Then the footsteps stopped. A terrible silence fell
over the room. There was no help for it.
Slowly, reluctantly the girl raised her head.